Checking in
11/8/2024
Wow. It’s been nearly six months since I wrote my last blog post. My apologies for the delay. The summer felt a bit surreal, and now the fall is even more surreal.
November 8th is my birthday (52 this year) and we have just been through a major election (oof!) so I thought this would be a good time to check in.
In late May, around the time I wrote my last post, I met a quirky and interesting man on a dating app, and quickly began to fall in love. Our relationship has felt both delightfully magical and at times deeply challenging, and I’m not sure what the future holds for us. I’m taking the relationship—like life itself—a day at a time.
These days, it feels like Life (with a capital L) has many learnings to share with me—about myself and the nature of reality—if I allow myself to be challenged, and to breathe through the difficult parts. Close relationships, as well as times of national and international turmoil, can push us to explore these questions.
On a day-to-day basis, I’ve continued my full-time cat sitting lifestyle, mostly in Portland for the summer, although I recently did a short sit in Hood River, Oregon, in the Columbia River Gorge, which was a nice getaway. I have also continued tutoring English to students around the globe on Cambly, which has been a cool way to continually gain different perspectives on life. These two income streams have been keeping the wolf from my door—if just barely—while allowing me the freedom and flexibility to live a relatively unencumbered life, with time for nature and reflection.
A few months ago, I also began studying Japanese on Duolingo. This has been fun, since I studied Japanese for a year back in college in the early 1990s. Since that time, I have visited Japan once (in 1998), have become enamored of Japanese gardens (have visited at least 35 or 40 of them in the US and Canada, over the last couple of decades) and have recently enjoyed watching a handful of Japanese reality shows on Netflix. Many of my Cambly students are Japanese, too, so it’s fun for me to discuss a little bit about their language and culture during our English lessons.
I’ve also continued to enjoy my walks in nature, especially forested areas. This part of the world contains so much natural beauty.
As we collectively enter a new era after this election… and as I experience another birthday, another opportunity to know myself… I find myself growing increasingly clear that my best and strongest gift to the human collective is that of love and empathetic witnessing. I find this to be true even—and especially—during these times of conflict, turmoil, violence, anger, fear, and human division. I am re-committing myself to offering empathetic listening to people who feel drawn to receiving it. Although I do need to sustain myself financially—and therefore continue to offer listening and life coaching to ongoing clients on a paid basis—I also like to simply offer free listening on an ad-hoc basis to folks I may reach out to if I sense that they need it, or to folks who may approach me because they feel drawn to being seen and heard in this way.
And of course I offer this invitation right now, to anyone who may be reading this. If you’re struggling in any area(s) of life, please feel free to reach out and we can schedule a time to talk, where I will listen with empathy, refraining from any judgment or advice, but simply hearing whatever you are going through and offering encouragement and support. Those of you who have experienced this know that it can be a surprisingly powerful practice.
I’m not sure how frequently I will be updating this blog going forward; I am choosing to follow my heart and intuition about when things feel right for me to share.
I do have one intention for the dark and cold months, though, and I’d love your help and support to manifest it: I’d like to take my traditional cold-season train trip to southern California, and to make that happen I will need some paid cat sits in that area. This time I’m aiming for the areas along the Coast Starlight train line, mostly Santa Barbara or Los Angeles. (My beloved San Diego is a place I’m considering as well, but I had so many troubles last year transporting my rig between the two cities, I’m aiming for the low-hanging location fruit this year.) My dates are between about December 18th and the New Year, though I have some flexibility. If you know of anyone in southern California who might need an experienced holiday cat sitter at reasonable rates, please feel free to share my link with them: www.dreamintochange.com/cat-sitting.
Thank you all for following along and witnessing me in my life. As always, it means a lot to me. I’ve been pulling back from social media in the past year or so, but I’m very open to one-on-one conversations with people, so if you’d like to connect by phone or video chat, please also feel free to reach out for that!
Wishing the best for all of you, all of us.
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